


Waterfall

by kogamis



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: F/M, One Shot Collection, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:15:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22018498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kogamis/pseuds/kogamis
Summary: Various pieces that have nowhere else to go.Ratings vary from mature to explicit.
Relationships: Kougami Shinya/Tsunemori Akane
Comments: 25
Kudos: 150





	1. Index

Chapter 1 - Index  
  
Chapter 2 - _Sacrifices_ ; Shinkane Week 2019 Day 1  
Shinya Kogami unlearns pieces of himself he wants to keep in the past. WC: 1099 | Rating: M (sexual assault mention)  
  
Chapter 3 - _Nightmares_ ; Shinkane Week 2019 Day 3  
Trapped in an apocalyptic world falling apart at the gruesome, decaying hands of a governmental experiment gone completely abysmal, Akane and Kogami take shelter in an abandoned apartment to wait for help. WC: 7203 | Rating: M (gore themes/mentions)  
  
Chapter 4 - _Temptations_ ; Shinkane Week 2019 Day 4  
Upon his return to the country, Akane visits an old friend to get drinks and catch up. WC: 7235 | Rating: explicit  
  
Chapter 5 - _Catharsis_ ; an epilogue for _Temptations_  
WC: 745 | Rating: M


	2. Sacrifices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinkane Week 2019 Day 1 - Sacrifices or Immortality?  
> WC: 1099  
> Rating: M
> 
> Shinya Kogami unlearns pieces of himself he wants to keep in the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially I wasn't planning to write anything for day 1, but as I was falling asleep last night the idea came to me suddenly, and I wanted to write it while I still had time. I'm not entirely satisfied with how it came out, but I hope you enjoy it regardless. Thank you for reading.

He is learning in pieces.

It starts first with his shell. She has an uncanny knack for navigating it as though he reads like an open book, finding its weaknesses, and then worming her way through those chinks to an inner layer he normally feels more comfortable hiding. But rather than being bothered by this unique talent of hers, he finds it curious. 

He had never been a conversationalist, and that much hasn’t changed a bit over the years; especially not when he’s trapped in a crowd, or even in the workroom during most days. But when he’s alone with her, it comes more naturally. She almost always initiates it. He hopes she doesn’t mind. But rather than his typical one-offs or sarcastic rebukes, something about her aura lures his true thoughts out of him like the way his cigarette smoke fills the room by its very nature.

He thinks about her all the time, mostly when she’s around. He doesn’t ask his questions aloud, and relies mostly on careful, quiet observations to infer answers for what he leaves unspoken. His eyes follow her around the room unconsciously, though he never means to stare, and when he catches himself, he stops. 

She’s getting better at reading his inquisitive expressions and prompts him for those unasked questions, and he’s growing more comfortable voicing them. He enjoys learning of her past and listening to her stories; he’s slowly making it a habit, whether by her coaxing it out of him or his reticent desire to initiate, to let her know he’s interested in her thoughts.

He is learning in pieces.

He has always been a protector by nature; it’s what forged his relationship with his best friend, lead him down his career path as a detective, what drew him to tactical advising for survivors of a civil war reclaiming their independence from a dictatorship. 

He is no different when it came to her. She was precious, and irreplaceable. If he were being honest, she pulled out his protective urges more strongly than anything else he’d ever encountered in his life.

But no matter how heavy his weights are, or how many countless hours he spends in the gym, or how increasingly thick his arms grow in bulk, he knows he can’t exist only as her shield.

At first, sparring with her made him nervous. Their size difference was a great matter of concern for him, so he would prefer to sit back and take turns with the sparring robot instead. He would study her, analyze her, internally grade her. Her form was correct, but her stance was slightly out of balance. Her disarming skill was excellent, but she left her defense just a bit open.

She would gladly take his advice, and eventually she was able to coax him into instructional demonstrations; how else could she learn if not with practice? 

He’s not one to underestimate her, either. He is always careful to not use too rough of force, and he quickly learns to not hold back with her. He teaches her ways to utilize her size effectively, and she quickly masters the art of counterbalance and using her opponent’s weight against them. 

It fills him with pride, seeing her excel, and that pride allows him to pull away from his carnal need to protect her, giving way to something healthier, more manageable. There was something meaningful about knowing with absolute certainty that she was capable of protecting herself, especially by his high standards, because there were undoubtedly going to be times where he couldn’t be there. 

He realizes this especially when she requests to practice self defense maneuvers against sexual assault, and with that comes a dawning that there are pre-existing battles she’s already lost, and more to come, that he can’t shield her from, no matter how tightly he holds her.

He is learning in pieces.

A monster he can’t protect her from reveals itself one day when his mother calls him with the news of his father’s death.

He learns the softness of her breasts feels more comforting on his face than the bitter, icy December winds from where he stands on the balcony, before she pulls him inside to the protection of her arms.

She holds him for a long time, and he understands why she so eagerly seeks the safety of his at every opportunity. She doesn’t ask him how he’s feeling, not that he would want to talk about it if she did. But where he lays, embraced by her unending warmth, makes him feel almost okay. If she does ask, he might just answer.

He is learning in pieces.

Adaptation is something that comes naturally to him, but he categorizes change as something else entirely different. Change, especially if he doesn’t agree with it, isn’t easy for him, and it takes time. So it comes as a surprise when change occurs within him without his acute awareness of it.

Particularly, when he wakes up one morning and reaches for his pack of Spinels out of habit, but finds nothing when he lights it. It’s the blatant lack of change that he becomes starkly aware of. 

There is not even a slight relief of his stress--or maybe there isn't any stress to be relieved of.

She finds the pack later, lured from their bedroom by the smell of eggs cooking. She holds it in her hands with amusement brightening her tired eyes. 

“Your heroin tried to escape to the garbage,” she announces with a yawn, nuzzling her way under his arm as he stands in front of the stove. She taps it against his bare chest. He takes it from her and tosses it carelessly onto the counter.

“I’m quitting.”

“Oh.” She sounds just as surprised as he felt. On his behalf, she disappears to discard the pack where she found it. He switches off the stove. 

“Why do you sound disappointed by that?” he jokes. 

She pulls him down by his shoulders. 

“I’m almost going to miss the taste,” she says, before she kisses him. He hums contentedly against her lips, curling his thumbs inside the waistband of her underwear.

“I can give you something else to taste,” he teases. She smiles, letting out a small laugh that gets smothered by his lips.

“Food first.”

He pulls away after stealing one last kiss and obliges, but not without promising to make do on his offer later on. A change of pace was something he could adapt to. He has learned to be more flexible, especially with her. For her. 

He is learning in pieces.


	3. Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinkane Week 2019 Day 3 - Dreams or Nightmares?  
> WC: 7203  
> Rating: M (gore mentions/themes)

She had to keep them moving.

His coughs were getting worse by the hour, growing more loud and guttural each time. He insisted he was fine. Occasionally he dry heaved, producing nothing except small pools of stomach acid once there was nothing left of their morning rations to expel. Every time it happened, he was left gasping for breath, and then the sharp intake of air only triggered more coughing. Then he would be left doubled over, unable to stand up entirely on his own by the violent force of his chest, and she was stuck trying to hold him up and clap him on the back until the fit passed.

Eventually, she decided he wasn’t in any shape to keep searching with her. By no fault of his, his coughs were too loud and attracting too much attention, and his condition wasn’t suitable for fighting by any means. She couldn’t help him if she was busy trying to protect him while killing _them_ off, especially if they came in too high of numbers for her to handle on her own.

Not only that, but the sun was starting to sink dangerously near the horizon, so if they didn’t felt shelter soon, they would be utterly fucked when night fell.

They took refuge in an abandoned apartment above what looked like an old crafting store. There were shelves of unpainted wooden figures left untouched, and below them small, dusty bottles of paint. Though it held some sentimental semblance of a life they used to live, like a ghost wandering aimlessly near its grave, Akane wasn’t too preoccupied with observing all the small details as her eyes darted from corner to corner, listening quietly for any stray movements that were not theirs. She supported him under his shoulder as they approached the stairs in the back, which creaked under their weight. Nothing was out of the ordinary downstairs, and the upstairs, a small studio with an attached bathroom, was clear as well.

Short of breath after the trek up the steps, Kogami dropped his backpack to the ground and fell back against the wall, letting himself slide down until he sat on the floorboards, which were caked with dust. He fished out a bottle of water from his pack and took small sips while he struggled to catch his breath.

Akane, in the meantime, secured the door with the deadbolt and the lock on the knob, then made her way to the single window on the other side of the room, covered by a translucent drape that did very little to keep out the light. She could tell it was originally white in color but held a stain of sunlight, a dim yellow layer etched into the material. The fabric was dingy and any excessive force would tear it instantly. She wondered how long it had been since it was touched by human hands.

She pulled back the curtain and surveyed the area in front of the store. Nothing lurked in the streets, and there was no sign of their friends or a rescue party. The window slid open, secured only by a single latch in between the two panes. On the outside, placed next to the window, was a base to mount a flag pole. Perfect.

Using a broom, a sheet from the set of drawers in the corner she sliced up using a knife, and an old tube of lipstick found in the medicine cabinet, Akane put together a makeshift SOS flag and stuck it to the base outside, then locked the window. If their friends happened to search this area, surely they would see the flag and at least investigate. At the very least they would check to see if there were other survivors, regardless of if it turned out to be the two of them.

When she put her attention back on Kogami, she noticed he was trembling, and his forehead was covered in sweat. His eyes were closed but snapped open when she put the back of her hand to his skin, which felt starkly cold in comparison. She knelt in front of him, her eyebrows knit together worriedly.

“You feel warm,” she said. “I’d say you have a fever.” She handed him his bottle of water and told him to drink some more, so he did. Then she gestured to the dingy bed in the corner with an old-fashioned brass headboard and frayed quilt, and before she could even suggest it, he outright declined.

“I’m not sleeping on that filthy thing,” Kogami muttered. His voice came out worn, and much huskier than usual.

“Oh come on,” Akane argued. “It’s better than this filthy floor. At least a bed is comfortable.”

“I’m fine right here,” he insisted. She stood up, sighing in frustrated defeat. He was always so stubborn about the most ridiculous things. 

She took another sheet from the drawer and laid it on the ground between him and the bathroom so he was at least protected from the floor’s grime, then tossed a thicker blanket at him to cover up with. He caught it, and she went to investigate the kitchenette on the other side of the room.

Thankfully, there was still running water, so she was able to refill their water bottles. That much relieved her considerably, since she was worried about Kogami getting dehydrated. She didn’t find much in the cupboards except for some crackers, an expired box of pancake mix, and a few cans of non-perishables. 

Even more thankfully, she found that the electricity still worked, though there were only two lights in the entire studio; one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. In the hospital where she and her friends had initially taken refuge, there was a generator that kicked on to still power the building. Anywhere outside of it, there was no telling if there was power of not.

She supposed that when the disaster initially struck, whoever was working utilities must have had some foresight and an overwhelming sense of empathy, deciding to keep everything on until the resources available drained themselves. It’s what she would have done.

In the bathroom, she found a bottle of ibuprofen. She wasn’t sure if it would help his cough, but it could reduce his fever at the very least. 

When she returned to him, he’d moved over to the sheet but still sat up against the wall, the blanket lying in a crumple on his thighs. While he swallowed the pills she spread the blanket out over his legs, then handed him the sleeve of crackers from the cupboard.

“They’re probably stale,” she said apologetically, “but hopefully you’ll be able to keep them down.” He hadn’t had anything to eat since very early that morning, and he’d already vomited his stomach of everything in it multiple times throughout the day.

“I’m not hungry,” he said. Then he fell into another coughing fit. She knelt by his side, holding his shoulder while he doubled over and struggled to breathe amidst the coughing. She could tell he was resisting the urge to vomit again. Ultimately he succeeded, and the fit passed. She handed him more water and the crackers.

“You need to eat something.” Her voice was firm, leaving no room for negotiation. So he succumbed to her wishes and nibbled on the edge of a cracker in between frequent sips of water. While he ate, Akane sat down in front of him, crossing her legs, watching him eat absentmindedly while she thought.

“Do you think it’s contagious?” she asked finally.

“I think it’s pneumonia,” he said quietly. “Which usually is.”

“Do you remember what medicines treat it?” 

Kogami had to think back a bit, to the days where he studied medicine before opting for a drastic career change as a detective, and came up with an answer.

“Antibacterials,” he said. “There are a lot of types of pneumonia so there are lots of treatment options.”

“What are they?” she asked. “I’ll bring back whatever I can find, but it would help to know what I’m looking for.”

“What, right now?” 

“Well yeah. The sooner, the better.”

“Are you crazy?” he argued. “It’s getting dark out. And you haven’t eaten anything either.”

Almost as if on cue, her stomach growled. He gave her a sharp, knowing look that dared her to lie about not being hungry, because she almost did.

She studied him with a torn look. Although he looked less sweaty, his face was pale and his body still quivered. And his last coughing fit worried her. He didn’t go very long without breaking into another one, so she was desperate to find him the medicine he needed. She really did not want to wait another day. But still, she knew he was right. Going out in the dark was infinitely more dangerous than during the day, and the only thing that kept her strength going until now was adrenaline and the duty she felt to protect him.

“I’m going first thing in the morning,” she declared. That much was not up for debate. He wasn’t keen on the idea of her going out by herself, and he hated sitting on the sidelines being utterly useless for help, but they didn’t have many options. 

Akane offered to take the first watch so he could sleep, which he desperately needed. She pried open a can of fruit and ate from it periodically until she figured they should switch, then scarfed the rest of it down once he woke her after the sun came up.

In the early morning hours, Kogami had been overcome with nausea and relocated to the bathroom floor, giving him easier access to the toilet to vomit into. That was where she left him, handing him his gun and a refilled bottle of water, then told him to lock the door behind her, promising she’d be back before sundown.

He never did bother getting up to lock it, mostly because he couldn’t find the strength to.

He waited for what felt like forever, dozing here and there for incomprehensible amounts of time; it could have been an hour, maybe only a few minutes. He really couldn’t tell the difference. He would wake when his head started to fall to the side, which would jolt him upright, or he would wake when his stomach felt the need to empty itself despite having nothing to rid, and he’d hover over the toilet bowl and let his stomach convulse needlessly until the wave of nausea passed, and then he’d sit back against the wall and stare at the ceiling until he dozed off again.

The last time he woke wasn’t due to either of those things. It was a door slamming downstairs that jolted him awake, quickly followed by a scream. It belonged to Akane, and he could tell she was in pain.

That fact alone was enough to make him fly to his feet, ignoring the sharp pain in his chest as he moved, grabbing his gun and throwing the door open to leap down the stairs. On the way down he heard a crash, a struggle, and the sound of banging on glass, and his head started to spin as he raced down the steps multiple at a time, around the landing and making his way to the first floor.

Akane was backed against the wall, holding a crowbar against her thigh with arm, and gripping the top of that arm with her other hand, breathing heavily through clenched teeth. Approaching her was one of _them_ , staggering on one good leg and dragging the other behind it, slashed at the knee. 

Instinctively, Kogami raised his gun, preparing to shoot it, but then noted the glass door and windows behind it, and the two bodies trying to claw their way through on the other side. If he shot and missed, he could shatter the glass and give them a way in.

So instead, ignoring the shooting pain in his chest and the spinning sensation, he charged for it, shoving his boot into its torso and kicking it away from her, causing it to tumble to the floor. He snatched the crowbar from her hand and raised it over his head, then brought it down on its skull, smashing it to slimy pieces until the body was still.

He stood over it for a moment, breathing heavily, fighting off the urge to start coughing. For now it seemed the other two bodies were trapped outside, but he didn’t feel right leaving the door unguarded. The one he’d just killed had gotten in somehow, and though he didn’t have time to survey the whole floor to see if there were any other openings to secure, he felt better sliding one of the shelves in front of the door to ensure it wasn’t going to open anytime soon.

The adrenaline pounding in his ears was starting to wear off, but skyrocketed a second time once he turned back to Akane, who’d sunk to her knees and was doubled over in pain, gripping her upper arm with icy knuckles. She kept her mouth shut with clenched teeth and wouldn’t respond to him, wouldn’t tell him what happened, nor would she let him remove her hand to inspect her wound. So he settled for hoisting her over his shoulder and running back up the stairs to deal with it instead, grabbing her discarded backpack that had dropped to the floor on the way up.

When the door was locked both ways and he brought her to the bathroom, finally out of the immediate threat of danger, his legs gave out on him. He collapsed to his knees and hurriedly set her on the ground on her side. He had to take a minute to rest his head, as he felt the threat of fainting dance around his vision, until a coughing spell came and brought with it another session of dry heaving, which was the worst possible timing imaginable. He could hear her breathing grow heavier and more vocal, until she was just groaning in one long drag of pain, only taking breaks to inhale and repeat.

When his symptoms finally passed over and he didn’t feel like he was about to black out, Kogami turned his attention back to Akane, who still laid on her side, curled into a fetal position. Her hair clung to her forehead, covered in sweat, and her skin felt hot to the touch. 

“What happened? Did you get scratched?” he asked, but he still couldn’t get a response out of her, probably because she was in too much pain to form words, let alone coherent sentences. She still clung to her arm. 

He noticed her fingers covered in blood, so he retrieved one of the first aid kits from the backpack nearest to him. With careful force, he rolled her onto her stomach to straddle her and wrenched her hand away from the wound, pinning her wrist to the floor and leaning down to inspect the damage. 

She nearly screamed when it was exposed to the air and writhed in pain when he tried to pull away the torn fabric of her shirt, which stuck to her skin. What he saw underneath was nauseating, as was the smell. It was too deep and too wide to be just a scratch.

When he noticed what looked like teeth marks, his spine stiffened, his eyes widened, and his stomach sank through the floor.

Akane had been bitten.

He had to force himself to stay calm. 

This wasn’t the first time it had happened to someone he knew. He hadn’t been there when his best friend was bitten; he’d only heard stories after the fact, which was gruesome all on its own. He never imagined he’d have to experience something like it himself.

“Cut it off,” she pleaded suddenly through gritted teeth. Her voice was strained and it cracked when she spoke. Kogami was visibly taken aback.

“What?” he asked, even though he’d heard her just fine, knew what the words meant, and knew it was the most logical course of action. But there was something terrifyingly raw about her words that prevented him from connecting them to reality.

Cut it…off? Was he even capable of doing that? There was no anesthesia, no way to numb her, and all he had for means of cutting was an old kitchen knife. Just the thought of _hurting_ Akane, by any means, made his stomach churn. And she was asking him to… _cut her off arm_?

“Hurry!” she yelled. “Before it spreads more!” That was all she managed to get out before her words melted into a sharp cry that made him jump. He watched as her hands balled into white fists on the floor. He knew he had to do something.

When Ginoza had been bitten, he had required an impromptu amputation. Kogami hadn’t been there when it happened, so he didn’t have a clue as to how he should do this, though he doubted Masaoka knew any better than he did, and he’d succeeded. Ginoza had survived an amputation with essentially the same tools Kogami had. Now he was alive and well, surely out there searching for them right in that moment. If Gino could survive, Akane could survive, too.

He had to do this, or else she would die. Or she would turn. Although to him, they were essentially the same thing.

Kogami left her on the floor temporarily, and returned shortly with everything he needed that they had available. His hands trembled at the thought of what he was about to do.

A sheet was laid on the floor, and he set her atop it. Her sleeve was rolled up to her shoulder where he disinfected the skin as best as he could. He sat on her back, holding her down with his weight, trapping her free arm between her torso and his leg. He gave her a cloth to bite down on. Like it was going to help anything.

He was really going to do it. 

He held the knife tightly in hand, pressing the blade against her skin. He focused on breathing slowly, calming himself. He had to do this, and to do it, he had to be focused. He had to ignore her cries, ignore the way her body would thrash against him, and he had to be quick.

He swallowed thickly. She yelled at him in desperation, crying around the cloth for him to hurry, for him to just do it and get it over with. 

So he did. And Kogami swore he would never forget the sound of pure, anguished agony as she screamed while he did.

Even after it was over, after he wrapped what was left of her arm in tight bandages, after collecting the mess and her dismembered limb in the sheet and throwing it down the stairs, she groaned in agony as she drifted in and out of consciousness behind the bathroom door. 

It killed him to sit there and listen, unable to do anything about it.

But he figured it was best to separate himself until she regained enough strength to do anything other than lay on the floor and sob, until his infection passed or was no longer contagious, whichever came first. Either way, it was a waiting game. He found himself counting the minutes it took for her to regain consciousness every time she fell silent. He hated listening to her cry but the sound relieved him immensely despite that. It meant she was still her, still alive.

In her backpack, he found a number of small, labeled bottles that all contained various types of medicine. Her venture had been successful, it seemed. At least there was that.

Among the pill bottles Kogami found a familiar name, levofloxacin. He was pretty sure that was one of the antibacterials used to treat pneumonia. There were tons of variations of the illness and subsequently there existed a wide variety of medications to treat it, and he couldn’t be sure which would be the most effective without knowing which strain he carried in his lungs. 

But what he held in his hand was the only thing she’d brought back that had a chance of helping, so he took two pills anyway, then moved on to look through the rest of the bottles, taking a mental inventory.

A few minutes later, his stomach convulsed. The pills did not want to stay down, just like everything else he swallowed. He tried to inhale through his nose and exhale through his mouth and clenched the muscles of his abdomen, gripping the pill bottles in his hand tightly, as if focusing all of his energy on straining his body to keep still would fight off the urge to vomit. He had to keep these pills down. He had to.

Time seemed to pass slowly as he sat there, his whole body rigid to fight it off, and eventually the urge passed, and he let himself breathe, his head relaxing against the door in exhaustion.

On the other side of the door, Kogami heard Akane stir again. This time, she seemed a little more alert than before. Though, by the severity of her crying, she sounded as if she was in just as much pain. 

Then he realized what he was holding in his hands, what he was sifting through in her backpack. They had ibuprofen on hand but he wasn’t sure that would do anything substantial to help her. But if there was an opioid among these…

He thought hard for the names he could remember… there was morphine, fentanyl, hydrocodone, oxycodone–wait, he remembered reading that on one of the bottle labels. 

“Kogami,” her aching voice said through the door. It was breathy and quiet, hardly above a whisper, and it sounded more like a question than anything. As though she were searching for him. Her breathing seemed heavy, like the act of saying his name alone was an exhausting task all on its own. He could hear the tears on her face.

“I’m here,” he said, rummaging through the bottles as quickly as he could. He could hear her sigh of relief in between labored breaths. She didn’t say anything else; she was probably too exhausted to, or she just passed out again. When he found the bottle of oxycodone, he decided to risk it, and checked on her so that he could change her bandages and offer the pain reliever. If she was still awake, that is.

And she was. She was staring at the floor when he entered, and her body was angled awkwardly, as though she’d been laying on one side for too long but was unable to switch to the other. Her bangs clung to her forehead, her cheeks were dirty and stained with tears, and her shirt felt damp in some places when he removed it to tend to her bandages.

She seemed aware of his presence, evidenced by the slow, focused movements of her eyes following him, but she didn’t say anything. She laid completely still while he unwrapped the gauze and replaced it, other than a few involuntary spasms of pain. 

The only response he could get from her was a nod of approval when he asked if she wanted to try taking the oxycodone he’d found, and he held up the back of her head while she sipped some water to swallow the dosage. With his thumb he wiped away her tears before they were replaced with a seemingly endless, silent stream. 

He wanted to hold her for longer, to cradle her in his arms while they…did what? Wait? What else were they able to do?

He was sick, growing weaker by the minute, attempting to fight off an infection with a medication that only had a small chance of being effective, and she was recovering from an amputation without a sliver of proper medical care. Neither of them were in any shape to continue their search for transportation to get back to the others, or any sort of help, for that matter. Their options were pretty much limited to sitting around and waiting for help to come to them, and to stay alive in the meantime.

Against his desires, Kogami decided it was best to let her rest without further risk of infection from him, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit anywhere else in the room besides the bathroom door. It wasn’t the most comfortable, and after awhile his ass had gone numb, but he refused to leave her alone.

Outside the window, he could see the shadow cast from the lowering sun on the makeshift SOS flag Akane had posted billowing in the wind. He smiled, internally praising her for her quick thinking. At this point, it was the only thing they could rely on for help. If he survived long enough for Ginoza and the others to come searching for them and finding the flag, he would owe her his life.

As the sun sank further, leaving the room a dull orange, Kogami found his eyes begging him to let them close. He could feel the skin beneath them visibly sagging the longer he forced himself to stay awake. It wasn’t safe to sleep without someone staying on guard, so he couldn’t. He refused to further jeopardize her safety. He’d already been the cause in what lead to her passed out on the floor. He’d already been the cause of her screaming.

In the silence of the evening it was hard to keep it from coming back to mind. If he wasn’t actively trying to think of something else, it would catch him off guard, and he would be tormented to the memory of holding the knife while she struggled to hold herself still underneath him, and he would find himself on the verge of hyperventilating.

To distract himself, he thought of his mother. He wondered if she had survived this long, if at all. The cold realist in him knew without a doubt that she hadn’t, and she had likely died a painful death at the hands of them. Still, he pictured her smile, warm and bright and unforgettable, like the way Akane’s face looked when she told him for the first time that she loved him. He wondered what his mother would have thought of Akane, meeting her with the knowledge of their relationship rather than the pretext of just being a coworker. Back then it was so much more complicated. 

Life as a whole had been so much more complicated. Even he, a quiet man who liked to live comfortably and simply, could admit that he missed a life like that,.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Akane stirring inside the bathroom. He’d counted nineteen minutes, almost exactly on the dot, which was shorter than before, and she didn’t seem to be crying. Was that a good sign?

Almost immediately, he retracted that thought as a particularly low sound could be heard from behind the door, one that made his spine rigid and his blood run cold.

She growled. And it was not unlike _theirs_.

He waited, frozen. His breath was held tight in his lungs, while his ears listened in high alert for something more.

It didn’t happen a second time. Instead, she fell silent. He didn’t exhale until his lungs were screaming at him to breathe, and even then, he continued to listen intently for the next noise, the next anything, be it a cry, a shuffling of her clothes, he didn’t care what it was. But nothing happened.

A few uneventful minutes passed. Kogami was almost able to relax by the end of them, until he heard her stir once more.

“Akane,” he dared to say, his tense voice breaking the heavy silence. 

“Hm?” she hummed, sounding confused and pained. But, she was conscious. No crying, and no growling. He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Maybe in his exhausted stupor he had just imagined it.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. He felt stupid asking it, seeing as how he had a pretty fucking good idea of how she was feeling, but he didn’t know what else to say or ask.

“I don’t know,” was her whiny, mumbled answer. He still didn’t hear any crying at the very least. 

“Did the medicine help?”

She answered through hefty breaths, “What medicine?”

“I gave you some a little while ago when I changed your bandages,” he explained. 

“My what?”

She must have forgotten, or maybe she blacked out the memory, not that he blamed her. He wished he had that luxury. He could hear the beginnings of panic as her breathing rapidly picked up, and he guessed she’d just re-discovered her missing limb. 

He started to move, as fast and as carefully as his weary body would let him, to let himself into the bathroom and console her, but she fell silent again before he could get all the way up. 

It was dark outside when she woke once more. Thirty-three minutes and thirty-nine seconds. Her cries were mixed strangely with a bone-chilling growling sound that was different than before, but just as terrifying.

He hadn’t imagined it. 

And when she stirred again a few minutes later, it was the same, and she didn’t respond to her name. He felt inexplicably cold.

His hopes were stretched thin when the next time she woke, when she called out for him repeatedly, and he called back to her saying things like “I’m here,” and “you’re okay,” but she didn’t seem to understand him. It was as though she could hear the sound of his voice, could hear his presence, but she couldn’t hear the words he said nor could she tell where his voice came from. She couldn’t form words of her own outside of screaming his name as her volume escalated in panic. 

He desperately wanted to open the door. His hand wrapped around the knob, but his entire arm trembled so hard he couldn’t keep a grip on it. Just like her screaming, he couldn’t un-hear the growling. It was inhuman. And he was scared of what he might see if he opened the door. 

She didn’t stay awake for longer than two minutes, anyway. As he let his arm fall from the knob once silence took over, he scolded himself for his act of cowardice.

He promised himself he would move to the bathroom the next time she regained consciousness, the next time he heard her voice, but he never did. 

Whatever noises were coming from inside the room were not from Akane, not from his Akane, and he felt his heart harden each time she passed out again without responding to her name.

It seemed to be around midnight–although what did it matter anymore, really–when she woke for the sixth time. His eyes were surely a deep scarlet, and he could feel the skin beneath them throbbing, from his general unwellness and from lack of sleep. 

That same, cold realist knew there wasn’t a point in continuing to try, but he did it anyway.

“Akane,” he said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his. It was cold and without emotion, something he’d never felt when saying her name before. Perhaps it was because he knew, deep down, that he wasn’t speaking to her anymore.

As expected, she didn’t respond.

Kogami sighed, then grit his teeth and stood to his feet.

Strangely, his hand didn’t tremble, even when he picked up the knife from the floor, the very same he’d used on her earlier. He doesn’t hesitate either, when he entered the bathroom, or even when he saw her form on the floor lying helplessly in a pathetic, growling heap.

She was facing the wall, and her clothes were drenched in sweat. He closed the door behind him, and for a minute, he just stood there, watching her.

Her body twitched, as though various nerves all over the surface of her skin were being prodded at random. When he finally knelt, and put his hand on her, he almost retracted it immediately from how hot her skin was.

She seemed to notice his presence then, turning her head, her mouth open with teeth jarringly barred. She growled at him. 

Kogami swallowed the lump forming quickly in his throat. He set the knife to the floor so that he could maneuver her into a sitting position in front of him, pushing her back against the wall. She struggled with him a little, but her efforts were laughably weak and futile. He easily subdued her, even in his own weakened state, by trapping her thighs between his feet and shoving her arm behind her back. He held her in place with one hand pressed tightly against the center of her chest.

Beneath his palm, he could feel how rapidly her heart raced. It was alarming. But her eyes were what frightened him the most.

They were red around the rims and fogged over with a blanket of milky white, leaving zero trace of her lively brown behind. He stared at them with disdain, ignoring the incessant growling, while he picked up the knife.

He held it to her neck, angling the sharp end of the blade against her skin. 

The utter hatred he’d reserved for himself earlier bubbled in his stomach, crushing him, weighing him down. If only he hadn’t hesitated earlier when she told him to cut her arm off, screaming at him in desperation while he sat there like a coward, scared of hurting her. Those precious seconds he wasted could have saved her. She was the braver one of the two, the one who knew what to do, the one who made the decision, the one who forced herself to lie still and endure the agony of it, while he took his sweet fucking time getting to it, all because he was scared. He had no right to be scared, not while she bravely made the ultimate sacrifice.

He was scared, and he failed her. And now he sat here, holding a knife to her throat, unable to hold back tears as he prepared to end her life because she was turning, because he hadn’t stopped it sooner when he could have. It was his fault.

He was the reason she went out on her own in the first place, and he could have helped her properly barricade the abandoned shop downstairs. It was his fault she’d been bitten and it was his fault she was turning, that she was dying, and that he had to kill her.

‘I’m sorry,” he said, his voice small and cold and pathetic, like it made any difference.

His fingers on pushed the knife, breaking through her skin, staring into eyes that didn’t belong to her anymore. 

And then something made him stop, just as a small trickle of blood pooled onto the blade.

Tears formed on the crusty, scarlet rims of her eyes. Her chapped lips came together to form a word, but nothing came out that wasn’t gargled with low growls, like she was choking on them somewhere in her throat.

He sat frozen in place, watching as her body shuddered violently, and then the growling ceased, replaced by shaky, labored breaths, and a single word she somehow managed, with visible difficulty, to force out.

“Wait.”

Her blood dripped onto his fingers, and he dropped the knife to the floor.

Slowly, like stray beams of sunlight shining through a thick layer of clouds, the milky fog gave way to hints of brown, as though the tears spilling over onto her cheeks were washing it away. He could see them clearly, the traces peeking out from underneath, even through his own wet eyes.

She continued to shake in uncontrollable spasms, even as she pulled her arm from behind her back, bringing her hand to his cheek for a long moment. It was as hot, but he didn’t flinch away, even when it started to burn. Then she brought her hand to her neck, where blood was trickling from her wound.

That broke through his trance. The cut wasn’t deep, he knew, but the bleeding needed to be stopped immediately. He glanced around himself frantically, searching for something to absorb the blood, and when he found nothing in the immediate vicinity, he yanked his shirt over his head, ignoring his aching body’s shivering protest. He bundled the fabric up and shoved it to her neck, pushing her hand aside.

When her fingers came to rest on top of his, Kogami dared to look up, finding her eyes staring at his. His heart hammered in his chest. They were her eyes. The fog had faded from satin white to a dull gray glaze, but beneath it her could see her. It was unmistakable.

She was fighting it. She was coming back to him.

The realization was unbelievably overwhelming, and he found himself falling forward, the top of his head smacking into the wall as he curled his face into her shoulder, and he wrapped a trembling arm around her back, his hand clenching around her fingers that snaked into the spaces between his. He sobbed, and she sobbed into him, with him.

It wasn’t long before he fell into a coughing fit. He turned his head sharply to the side to avoid coughing on her, and she held him feebly while they waited for it to pass, but by then, she lost consciousness again.

The bleeding from her neck had slowed enough for him to bandage it properly. While he was at it, he checked the gauze on her arm and changed that too, and as the minutes passed he found it harder to keep his eyes open. In the dresser drawers he found two replacement shirts for both of them; the smallest one he could find was loose-fitting on her frame, but considering how terribly coated her body was with sweat, it was for the best.

After all of that, he didn’t feel right leaving her alone anymore, so he decided to hole up with her in the bathroom. It happened to be the warmest section of the apartment, and since he’d subjected himself to being exposed half naked to the air, even with a new shirt he couldn’t stop shaking. Her temperature helped considerably once he pulled her against him, her back to his front, while she lay sprawled between his legs. 

Though she was small, her weight was heavy enough to make it harder for him to breathe, but he couldn’t care less. He refused to be separated from her.

Part of him, the rational part, recalled exactly why he’d kept the door between them in the first place. That same part of him was sensible enough to grab the various medicines, along with water, the sleeve of crackers she’d forced on him, and their weapons before he resigned himself to the bathroom.

The part of him that felt like iron, debilitated and in desperate need of sleep, couldn’t remember if he’d locked the door or not. From where they sat he could see it clearly, but he pulled the gun to rest closer to him, just in case.

Her warmth called to him, lulling him to let his eyes close, but he refused to sleep until she woke again. This time there was no growling, not anything remotely inhuman, and her eyes were almost back to normal. Despite how heavy he felt all over, that much made his chest feel considerably lighter.

He had her drink some water and gave her another dose of pain medicine. He tried to get her to eat something, to at least nibble on some crackers, but she fluctuated between full consciousness and a half-asleep state too frequently for her to make much progress with eating. He, himself, was starting to slip, his body giving out on him. He knew he couldn’t force himself to stay awake forever.

It came down to waiting from there, as neither of them had the strength to move from that spot. Survival depended on the flag she’d hung outside. His arms clung to her, wrapped tightly around her front, while he let his gnawing eyes finally close. 

If they were going to survive, it would be because of her. 

He must have fallen asleep, because his eyes flashed open suddenly, and sunlight now filled the room. The sun had come up. For a moment, he sat there, confused; he felt like he’d been woken by something. It couldn’t have been Akane because she lied still against him, sleeping quietly. He didn’t see anything in the room before them, and the door was still closed.

Then he heard it. There was something moving downstairs. 

His hand moved for the gun sitting beside him, while his arm screamed at him in the process. His entire body was stiff, throbbing with a dull ache. He ignored it, releasing the safety on the gun and securing the soles of his boots into the tiled floor, pinning himself in place in case he needed to shoot. He stared at the door intently, waiting with his breath drawn.

Voices could be heard, though they were muffled through the floor between them. Then he could hear footsteps up the stairs, and a voice he recognized yelled in horror at something gruesome on the middle landing.

His heart started racing. He listened on, his eyes fixed on the doorknob.

The voice grew louder, and Kogami quickly realized it was accompanied by others. There were three, and he recognized two of them. Whoever the third belonged to, they were a stranger to him.

For a second he was worried he was hallucinating, until the footsteps stopped just outside the door and were replaced by banging when the doorknob wouldn’t turn, which made Akane stir. Though she didn’t wake all the way, he was relieved to know he wasn’t the only one hearing things.

A voice called out their names from behind the door, and Kogami swore he could have started crying right then and there when, in his near-delirium, he put a name to the voice. He attempted to call back, but his voice came out raspy and quiet, and then he started coughing before he could clear his throat and try again. It still did the trick, at least.

“I hear Kogami in there,” he heard Ginoza say urgently. “Where’s the ax?” Moments later someone was smashing the door apart near the knob, until a hand reached through the wreckage and unlocked it, and then the door opened.

He could have felt more relieved if he wasn’t busy trying to keep his stomach from violently dispelling its contents. His head turned to the side to keep from coughing directly on Akane, he couldn’t see who broke down the door.

“Oh my god,” he heard, this time a female’s voice. Kunizuka. Guess they didn’t look to be in that great of shape.

“We have to move quickly,” said the third person Kogami didn’t recognize. “Before more of them wander this way.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ginoza enter the bathroom and kneel in front of them. He didn’t say anything, probably staring at the horror that was Akane’s missing limb evidenced by the empty sleeve hanging from her shoulder. If anyone knew the pain of dismemberment like she did, it was him.

The coughing subsided moments later, and by then Ginoza was starting to lift her semi-conscious body from Kogami’s arms. She stirred some more as her head fell against his chest, and she mumbled something incoherent, which Ginoza ignored, passing her to the newcomer with bright orange hair.

That made him alert. He trusted Ginoza to handle her, but a complete stranger?

“Who’s this?” he asked, his tone overprotective and bitter. He started to move to get up, but then his legs, weak and trembling, gave out on him, and he fell back on his ass. His head began to spin, and the edges of his vision started to cloud with black around the edges.

“There’s no time to explain,” Ginoza said, kneeling back down to help Kogami up. “You can trust him. Kunizuka, take the front.” Yayoi, who’d busied herself with recollecting all the supplies strewn on the floor and shoving them into their discarded backpacks, stood and nodded, shouldering the packs and picking up the ax. She temporarily erased the look of deep concern her face to lead the way back down the stairs, followed closely by the newcomer holding Akane, and then by Ginoza carrying Kogami on his back.

He must have lost consciousness on the way down, because the next time he woke he was seated in the back of a car. Akane, still asleep, was strapped in next to him, and Kunizuka sat beside her, gripping her hand. Ginoza was driving and the stranger with odd hair sat in the passenger seat, positioning a rifle out of the cracked window, ready to shoot. Though from what Kogami could see out the windshield, there were no immediate targets in sight.

“You’re awake,” Kunizuka announced. 

“What the hell happened?” Ginoza asked. Kogami grabbed his throbbing forehead. The memories of the past twenty-four hours suddenly felt blurry, now that he was no longer trapped in the bathroom, and he could breathe knowing proper medical attention waited in their near future.

A lot had happened, emotionally and physically. His stomach quivered at the thought of recounting the nightmare of it all, so he said nothing. That in itself seemed to say everything.


	4. Temptations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shinkane Week 2019 Day 4 - Sweetness or Temptation?  
> WC: 7235  
> Rating: explicit
> 
> Upon returning to the country, Akane visits an old friend to get drinks and catch up.

_22:19_

The mesmerizing lights of Tokyo are one of the things Akane loves the most about the city. At night, when the sky of ink backdrops towers and buildings that each forge a unique shape to every onlooker, she feels the lights are especially dazzling. 

She’s been enamored with the faux magic since her first drive through the city at night, when a last-minute interview for the CID awaited her in the morning, prompting an unexpected trip from her home in Chiba. She still remembers the long breath she drew as her eyes settled on the skyline for the first time, watching the buildings shift around each other as the car drove on. She remembers wondering which building would be her hotel, and what excitement she had to look forward to once she started her job and moved to the city permanently; it was not unlike now, except the hotel she searches for in the distance is not hers, and she finds herself admittedly far more nervous than excited this time around.

The car drives automatically, which is unusual for her; Akane enjoys driving and normally likes to switch off the auto-pilot setting. But from time to time, especially at times like these, where her mind is somewhere else and her eyes wander aimlessly outside the window, she lets the car drive itself.

She approaches the hotel as the car pulls into the parking lot, and Akane’s stomach does a flip as the building draws closer. Her gaze flits between lit windows, counting up the rows until she hits floor number six. Somewhere, one of the windows belongs to room #644, and knowing him, the curtains are likely closed, drawn open only enough so that his eyes can briefly dart outside to watch cars zip by on the freeway in between paragraphs of the book he’s reading.

When she steps off the elevator onto the sixth floor, her heart beats with the rhythm of her footsteps–perhaps even faster–as she reads and follows the signs. Her fist raises, clenching once to squeeze out the nerves, then knocks twice, and takes an anxious step back when the door opens.

He’s wearing a black bomber jacket that covers a white collared shirt tucked into dark jeans, somewhat reminiscent of the casual style he donned his formalwear all those years ago. She relaxes the second she catches his eye, feeling her shoulders unclench and the corners of her lips turning up; what had she been so nervous about?

He doesn’t offer a greeting like a normal person, and instead steps to the side so she can enter.

“You’re a bit overdressed,” he says, his voice as rough and calloused as ever. She's missed the sound of it. “But you look nice.” 

“I came from a dinner party in Chiba,” she explains. Chiba was almost an hour away, which left her with no time to change clothes, although she would hardly classify a black pencil skirt and a white ribbed turtleneck as overdressed. But she doesn’t argue, and lets him take her coat to hang it in the closet.

The room is small, contemporary, with one bed, a desk with a swivel chair, and a small black chaise in the corner where a paperback book sits open but facedown. The decorations are sleek and modern, brightening the space considerably. A mirror taking up the wall alongside the bed makes the room feel bigger than it looks. She was right about the curtains.

He seems uncomfortable the further into the room they venture. Or perhaps awkward was a better word.

“There’s a bar downstairs,” she says, and that’s all she has to say. Soon she’s with him back in the elevator, and then she sits across from him in a dimly-lit booth, ordering a margarita.

“This place seems a little fancy to be holed-up in,” she says casually. “It doesn’t really suit you.”

“It wasn’t my choice,” he says. “And you’re right. The room feels stuffy.”

She giggles a little to herself, as she was thinking he would say something like that. It’s nice to know he hasn’t changed.

“How do the scanners work?” she asks. “Has your hue…?” Her voice trails off as she isn’t sure how to word her question, how to ask if his psycho-pass has improved at all, especially since she is doubtful that it has. But she can’t think of another explanation for how he’s able to be temporarily placed here and walk around unsupervised, or to enter the bar without flagging the scanners.

He points to his skull with a single finger, eerily similar to the shape of a gun. 

“It’s classified,” he says. 

“You can’t tell me?”

“That means I can’t be scanned without permission.”

“They’re placing an awful lot of trust in you to not cause trouble,” she says. He chuckles.

“Still not holding back your harsh remarks, I see.”

Before she can think of a response, their drinks are set down in front of them, Akane’s bright margarita glass standing tall above his golden scotch. She takes a tentative sip, watching as he downs a couple gulps without haste, nor does he grimace from the sultry taste.

“How are you?” she asks, her voice lowering. He stares into the contents of his glass, held by his fingers at the rim. The last time she’d seen him he wasn’t terrible, satisfied with distracting himself amidst guerilla operations and tactical advising. But satisfied doesn’t translate to being well, and based on one of their final conversations, he hadn’t seemed all that well at the time.

“I’m alright,” he says finally. It’s hard to get a read on him, to see how much of him is telling the truth. He notices the look of concern on her face despite her attempts to mask it. “Really. I am.”

“Have you thought about receiving psychological care?” she asks, not yet sold. 

“I’ve contemplated.” 

“That sounds like a no, then.”

“I’m still exploring my options. I only got back in the country a couple days ago.”

“Yes, I’m sure Poe’s poetry has all sorts of resourceful information about your options.” He smirks at her remark over his glass.

“Are you familiar, then?” he asks.

She shakes her head regrettably. “Not as well as I'd like to be. I do more tactical reading these days.”

“You can borrow it if you’d like.” 

She smiles softly around the salt on her glass. “I’m tempted, but I’m not sure when I’d be able to return it.”

He shrugs. It’s not like she’d be on a deadline, seeing as how he isn’t going anywhere. But for her, that's the part she's having trouble with; he isn't leaving, and that much has yet to stick with her completely. It is almost too good to be true, and she has difficulty believing it when she thinks about him. He had been away for so long, and even then she’d only known him for a few months prior to his disappearance. She has so strongly associated the word with him that it feels unreal for him to be anything but gone. 

Did she even have the right to think of him as much as she did all these years, when she’d only known him for such a short amount of time in comparison?

“Why Chiba?” he asks, breaking her from her thoughts.

“What do you mean” she asks.

“Your dinner party.”

“Oh,” she says, her voice turning surprisingly sour. “It was for a school reunion.”

“You don’t seem too thrilled to have gone.” He's a quick drinker; he finishes off his drink with a final swig and waves the bartender back over.

“Well Chiba isn’t exactly nearby,” she explains. “It takes an hour just to drive there. And then my other friend had to bail last minute, so I was left alone stuck with having to explain the death of my best friend over and over to everyone who hasn’t heard yet."

She pauses, mostly because the bartender steps into earshot near their table, but also because she needs to collect the rest of her thoughts. She hasn’t yet finished her margarita but asks for a second anyway, since he’s there, and finishes speaking once he’s gone to prepare their order. 

“Of course there were people who she knew who couldn’t come to the funeral, and some people who just didn’t know it happened at all, but there was an overwhelming amount of reactions that just seemed…” Her voice hangs in the air for a moment as she searches for the right word.

“Insincere?” he offers.

“Yes,” she says. “Exactly. It became all anyone wanted to talk about.”

“That sounds exhausting.” 

The way she swishes down a couple gulps at once rather than the polite sips she’d been taking tells him he’s right. Then she continues on, mentioning how one of her old classmates in particular was someone she has the misfortune of knowing more than she’d like to. He watches her finish the rest of her drink and wonders what she means by that. An ex-boyfriend, perhaps? Or was he simply fabricating reasons to dislike this individual, other than by the way she spoke of him?

“He dated Yuki for…I’m not sure, a month, maybe?” she says, immediately dissolving his hypothesis and leaving him feeling foolish. “They broke up around the time we took our placement exams. Back then he found it just _intriguing_ how he and I were the only two to score an A ranking for the Ministry of Commerce, which he brought up again tonight and wouldn’t shut up about it. That, and his absolutely _incredibly well-paying job_ as a financial consultant.” 

She rolls her eyes and immediately reaches for her second drink once they’re dropped off at their table. He can’t help but feel amused watching her speak. It seems his hypothesis wasn’t terribly far off. 

She seems to notice his gaze intent on her but misreads it, by the way she suddenly sits up straight, as though she’s caught herself in the middle of something she isn’t supposed to be doing.

“I’m sorry,” she says, giving him a bashful smile. “I’m blabbering on about it. I’ll stop.”

Kogami shrugs. He isn’t bothered. He’s the one who asked in the first place.

“If you need to rant about slimy bastards who can’t take a hint, then you should rant,” he says simply, flashing her a sympathetic half-grin. She lets out a curt laugh, though she still looks apologetic. So he adds, “Dude’s way out of his league, anyway. Doesn’t seem like your type in the slightest.”

“And just what do you know about my type?” She narrows her eyes inquisitively at him over the rim of her glass, hiding her lips behind it.

He doesn’t miss a beat. “I know you’re not into someone with a boring office job, or incapable of holding an even remotely stimulating conversation, and definitely not someone shorter than you.”

For a moment she looks puzzled, and then her face softens into a curious smile. “Your profiling skills are as sharp as ever.”

He can’t tell if she’s referring to herself or to Mr. Financial Consultant, or maybe both, but he shrugs off the compliment anyway.

“Anything else exciting or otherwise noteworthy?” 

Her eyes roll a second time, like the mere act of giving thought to these previous events was as annoying as experiencing them.

“He invited me to his apartment so I could talk more about the tragedy if needed,” she says. The way her voice hardens on one particular phrase, coupled with the lingering traces of anger in her eyes, makes him want to subvert the topic.

“So how did you give him the slip?”

“I told him I had a date to get going to,” she says simply. He nearly chokes on his drink. The gentle rose rising to the tops of her cheeks doesn’t go unnoticed.

He doesn’t remember choosing to lean forward, but then his arms are crossed on the table in front of him and there’s noticeably less distance between them.

“Is that what this is?” he asks.

“Would you call it something else?”

He keeps his gaze fixed on hers, looking for any hints of hesitancy, uncertainty, or even a trace of humor, yet he finds none of that. She stares back at him blankly; it’s a genuine question, and she expects a genuine answer.

“I guess not.” 

He studies her again, but differently this time–as though he’s letting himself truly look at her for the first time in a long time, which he is. Her face is no longer curved with juvenile softness like the first day they met; instead it’s been replaced with hardened edges, with stories he’s yet to listen to. Her eyes have grown more intimidating than ever, though she holds in them a gentleness that hasn’t faded in the slightest.

“Is there something on my face?” she asks. She brings a hand up to touch her cheek subconsciously. 

“No,” he answers. Then he notices she is shivering. “Are you cold?”

Her composure shifts suddenly, like she hadn’t even noticed that she was, in fact, cold, until he said something.

“A little,” she says. She glances up to the ceiling, finding an air vent positioned directly above their table. Just her luck; purposefully picking the booth furthest off to the side would, of course, have some sort of drawback. 

When she turns her attention back to him, he’s shrugging out of his jacket.

“Oh, no, you don’t have to-” But of course, because he’s him, he ignores her protest and passes it to her over the table. She hesitates but takes it anyway, thanking him quietly. When she slips her arms through the sleeves, it’s warm and smells like his cigarettes. She finds herself inexplicably off-put finding his scent somewhere other than her ashtray.

“Aside from all of that,” he says, referring to her less-than-pleasant dinner party, “how are you?”

“I’m doing fine,” she says. “Though I feel like I’ve talked about myself too much.”

“I don’t mind,” he says.

“I want to hear one of your stories,” she insists. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty to pick from.”

“You’re putting me on the spot,” he says with a small smile. “Now it’ll be hard to think of one.”

“Did you meet anyone special?” she asks. 

“What do you mean by ‘special?’”

“Like interesting, noteworthy, quirky, I don’t know. Someone with a story.”

He has to think for a moment, though it looks as though he’s contemplating what he wants to tell rather than searching for something to say.

First he tells her of the few temporary partners he traveled with after leaving SEAUn, who were mostly mercenaries like him skating by and keeping a low profile. She chuckles to herself as she tries to picture _him_ , of all people, keeping a _low profile_ , which she then explains once he questions her reaction. He briefly laughs along with her, but it doesn’t last long.

His eyes change when his story shifts, and he tells her of a young girl he met named Tenzing. He doesn’t tell her much. His story focuses more on the act of saving a bus full of refugees from armed guerillas–which, to her, sounds a lot more like him than in the previous tale–and how he was followed by the young girl, who’d been on the bus, to seek self-defense training. 

He tells her she was a cheerful, enthusiastic child with a lot of passion and promise, and that he agreed to train her because she was an orphan of war, and that he felt sorry for her. He pauses there, and she can see the sadness hardening his eyes like steel. She can tell that there is more to the story, but he seems hesitant to continue. So she gives him an out.

“Sometimes I wonder if kindness is actually your true weakness,” she muses aloud. 

That takes him aback. “As opposed to something else?”

“I would have said fear before, but now I might be thinking differently.”

He leans back against the booth cushion and studies her with a calculating eye, crossing his arms over his chest. “You must think you have me all figured out, then, right?”

“Is it rude of me to say that I think I do? To a degree at least?”

“It’s not so much rude as it is ballsy,” he says.

She laughs, but goes on to explain her reasoning. “I’ll admit, you puzzled me when we first met,” she says. “I couldn’t figure you out for awhile.”

“That’s funny,” he interjects. “I used to feel the same about you.”

“Do you think you have me all figured out, too?”

“More or less. To a degree,” he adds with a smirk. “Though I’m not as confident as you seem to be.”

“What it comes down to is an understanding of someone’s character,” she says. It took her a long time to figure that out, though she hadn’t figured it out all on her own. “When you understand their character, you can understand their reasoning behind most things.”

“And when you understand reasoning, you can make all sorts of inferences,” he finishes. “That’s what you were going to say, right?” 

She nods. She gives him a curious smile, seeing the gears turn in his head. She wonders what he’s going to say next.

“Put your theory to the test, then,” he challenges, throwing back the last of his drink and setting the glass down at the end of the table. “If you have me all figured out, tell me what you think my type is.”

It’s her turn to be taken aback, and she feels her cheeks grow warm. She avoids his eyes, at first wondering why this prompt of all things, then supposes it’s his way of making up for poking fun at her regarding the same topic earlier. Either way, she decides to humor him.

“You’re similar to me,” she says thoughtfully, “you prefer someone intellectually stimulating. Monotony bores you, so you like someone who can keep you on your toes–but not someone too reckless, even though that’s rather hypocritical, if you ask me.” He chuckles at the abrupt drop in her tone, riddled with vexation, before she continues. “You have a very protective nature, so you prefer someone that you can easily protect. But you also like when someone has a strong sense of self and can be assertive when they need to be. There’s a complicated balance there, but the right person won’t make it complicated.”

He takes a long moment to consider everything when she finishes.

“I’d give that about an eighty-five percent accuracy,” he says finally. “Maybe ninety.”

“Did I miss something?”

“You didn’t mention anything about physicalities.”

“You’re not materialistic; you value intellect more than anything. I didn’t think things that are particularly important to you.”

“Not most things, but some things.”

Now she’s the one who doesn’t remember leaning forward. “Like what?”

He mirrors her instinctively, with a peculiar repressed grin on his lips–almost coy. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” 

“You’re the one who mentioned it,” she shrugs. She distracts herself by sipping on what was left of her drink.

“Was I?”

She backtracks when she pauses to recall the exchange just a moment before. “It was more of a group effort,” she decides. “But either way, I wouldn’t consider physical preferences as something that can be deduced by one’s character.”

“All right then,” he says. “I take it back. I’ll give you ninety-five percent accuracy.”

“What about the other five?”

“You really don’t settle for less than perfect scores, do you?” 

She laughs, because he’s right, yet she fixes a look on him that tells him she isn’t backing down until she hears his answer. Always so persistent and thorough. He sighs.

“It would be inappropriate to say,” he says quietly, and he almost feels bad for the urge he has to chuckle when the rose hue returns to her complexion. She finishes her drink then scoots the empty glass to sit discarded beside his.

“Is it because you’re shy?” she asks. There’s a ghost of a challenge in her tone that he’s positive he isn’t imagining. He no longer feels bad. 

He chooses his next words carefully.

“It’s…more of a conversation that would be better had upstairs.” 

For a moment, the air between them is stiffer from his implications hanging heavily in it. It takes her a second to process his words, and then she seems to process them a second time to have them finally click, cued by her eyes widening just slightly. Before she responds to him, she checks the time via the terminal on her wrist. He’s surprised by how strongly he anticipates her answer, by how his heart beat with a more vigorous rhythm in his chest than it was just moments before.

“I’m tempted, but,” she says, following her words with a sigh, and he already knows what comes next. “It’s getting late, and I have plans in the morning. I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head, waving away her apology. Her unwavering sense of responsibility hasn’t changed either, it seems. His ego isn’t bruised by any means. The admittance of temptation alone is enough to satisfy him. 

“Perhaps when you find time to return the book, you won’t be visiting too late,” he says. 

“I’ll make sure to leave the following morning open, too,” she says, offering him a smile before she gets up to pay the bill.

Back upstairs, she swaps his jacket for her coat, and even though hers is thicker and more suited for the wintry gusts swirling outside, it’s not nearly as warm. She takes Poe from his outstretched hand and tucks it into her purse, and from there she isn’t sure how to bid him goodnight. She feels a desire to do something, but nothing fitting comes to mind. He doesn’t offer anything other than holding the door open for her.

As she steps through the door, she assures him she will call a taxi instead of driving herself home, and promises she will come say hello in the morning when she returns for her car–if he’s awake, that is–and then he returns her ‘goodnight’ as she makes her way down the hall.

She listens for the sound of his door closing as she approaches the elevator, but she doesn’t turn around even though she never hears it. 

Once down in the lobby, she makes her way to the front door with a taxi service pulled up on her cell phone. On her way, she passes by the bar she was just sitting in a few minutes ago. A smile dances on her lips, warming her from head to toe. It may be the most recent, but this memory is definitely the one she’s most fond of, even if it was rather fleeting in comparison to the others.

And then something about that thought makes her stop in her tracks, just a short distance from the revolving door. Her thumb hovers over the button she’s just pressed, promising a momentary pick-up, but her eyes are fixed on the cancel button in the corner.

Does she really have to leave so soon? She hadn’t seen him in over two years, and she’s already leaving with no definitive plans to see him again after what, less than an hour? That hardly seems fair in comparison.

She turns back to the bar, and from where she stands, peering into the open space, she can see the table where they sat. The bartender is only just now collecting their used cups, preparing to wipe down the table, and she remembers the way his hand curled around the base of his glass when he drank, how his fingertip drew circles around the rim when he spoke, how his eyes shone in a way that matched his glass reflecting the light fixtures above when he gave her an implied invitation back upstairs. 

Perhaps it’s the two margaritas to blame, but she quickly hits ‘cancel’ before she can stop herself. And then she’s walking back into the bar to the counter, and purchases a bottle of Cabernet while she types up a message to Kaori. She hits send, takes back her card and freshly unsealed bottle, and makes her way back to the elevator.

He’s just finished undoing the last button of his shirt when there’s an unexpected knock at the door, barely audible with the shower running. He leans past the curtain, just avoiding the hot stream, to twist the knob and shut off the water. As he makes his way to the door, he briefly wonders if it’s Akane, but he knows she didn’t forget anything; or maybe it’s a housekeeper, though it seems a bit late for that.

When he opens the door, it is Akane standing before him, holding up a bottle of Cabernet with a look of question in her eyes. They drop briefly to his midsection, then flit back up to his face just as quickly as they fell.

“This isn’t a taxi,” he says, leaning against the door frame. He can see her throat contract when she swallows.

“I don’t need one,” she asserts.

He suppresses a grin and steps to the side, then closes the door behind her. She slips off her shoes and drops her purse to the small table next to the closet.

“What happened to your morning plans?” he asks, taking from her the wine bottle as well as her coat. He holds onto the back of the collar while she slips herself out of it.

“I pushed them back,” she says. “Did I interrupt something?” She gestures to his shirt, which still hangs open from his shoulders.

“Just a shower.” With her coat hung properly in the closet, he slides the door shut.

“Well don’t let me stop you,” she says, offering a kind smile. “I can wait.”

“You sure?”

She nods, then pulls the book of poetry from her purse as he turns and heads back into the bathroom, after tossing the bottle safely onto the bed. She can hear the water switch on through the closed door while she surveys the room, and reaches around her neck to remove her necklace.

A small stack of paper cups sit beside a coffee maker on the desk. They aren’t technically proper, but they work just fine for casual drinking. She pours herself a small amount, leaving her necklace and earrings on the desk, and curls up on the chaise with his book.

Kogami is quick; by the time Akane reads through only a couple pages, she hears the sudden absence of pouring water followed by the screech of shower curtain rungs being pulled to the side. She pauses her reading, sipping Cabernet from her paper cup, and decides to wait for him before she continues.

His hair is still wet when he sits down beside her, and he wears the same clothes as before, only his shirt is buttoned rather lazily. The top of his chest is exposed, and she has a nice view of his collarbone. She briefly wonders before deciding with suspicious certainty that he’s done it very much on purpose.

He glances down to read the page where she holds the book open.

“‘Annabelle Lee’ is one of my favorites,” he comments, before swallowing a rather generous amount of liquid from his own cup.

“Really?” she asks. “That’s a bit of a surprise to me.”

“What do you think of it?” he asks.

“I like it,” she says, “but I think I’d like it more if you read it aloud.” He gives her a perceptive smile, obliging, and he dumps back the rest of his wine impressively fast so he can take the book from her hands after discarding the cup to the floor. He invites her to lean into him, draping his arm behind her shoulders across the back of the chaise. She does, with a warm fluttering in her stomach, and curls her legs up onto the seat underneath her, resting her head comfortably against his shoulder.

As he reads, Akane finds that the poem is significantly better read in his voice, which is low and rough, compared to reading it in her head. Something about the rugged resonance of his voice telling the tale of a love so strong and intense that it makes angels envious, a love that ultimately suffers the tragedy of death, brings it to life, as though his voice alone could sculpt the story into reality. 

He turns the page and continues to read, and she listens. Her eyes follow along with the words as he reads them aloud, and she sips on Cabernet until her cup is empty and she holds it lazily with both hands in her lap.

Eventually, the sound of his voice coaxes her eyes to relax, and they flutter closed. Before long, Kogami notices, and he pauses, craning his neck forward to inspect.

“You’re not falling asleep on me, are you?” he asks. She hasn’t, and her eyes open. Having his answer, he pulls back.

“No,” she answers anyway. “It’s just nice to hear you read.”

“You didn’t come back just to listen to me read.” It comes out as both a question and a statement, but she stiffens nevertheless when she feels his breath tickle her ear. She can feel his eyes on her, studying her, reading her reaction, and she wants to return his gaze, but she can’t bring herself to look away from the book in his lap.

She can speak, at the very least.

“What did I come back for, then?” she asks. Her words come out sounding stronger than she feels. She wants to say more, to help steer the conversation like she had absolutely no problem doing when she sat across the table from him earlier, but the warm shape of his body against hers is incredibly distracting. Her eyes study the shape of his hand, the bridges of his fingers as they rest on worn pages. She wonders what they feel like.

“A stimulating conversation, maybe,” he muses. His voice is lower than normal, and she can still feel his breath on her ear, and his arm draped behind her edges noticeably closer until she feels it against her back and his hand cups her shoulder.

“You are good at those,” she says through a shaky breath. She notices a small movement in the corner of her eyes so her gaze flits to it, and she finds herself eyeing the zipper of his pants.

“So I’ve heard.” Her cheeks start to feel warm.

“I liked the one we were having downstairs,” she manages. Kogami slowly closes the book, but continues to hold it in his lap.

He hums with feigned confusion, and though she cannot see his face, she can hear the smirk he’s undoubtedly wearing. “You’re going to have to refresh my memory.”

“We were talking about weaknesses,” she says, and as she speaks he moves the book to drop on the floor.

“We never did talk about yours, did we?”

She doesn’t know why, but she laughs. Maybe it’s because she’s feeling on edge, anticipating what comes next, and didn’t think this would be it.

“I really don’t know what my weakness is,” she says with uncertain honesty. She watches as his hand reaches for hers, plucking the empty cup from them and discarding it to join the book. “Sometimes I think I’m too cold-hearted.”

This time Kogami is the one to laugh. The sound of it bursting from his chest melts away some of the tension in her shoulders.

“What makes you think that?” he asks.

“Because my psycho-pass doesn’t cloud.”

“That’s the last word I would use to describe you,” he says, replacing the hole left gaping in her hands with his own. It’s big and warm and fits perfectly between hers, and holding it gives her a sudden rise of insurmountable courage, as though it were a chink in his armor that she can cling to for purchase. She turns her body just slightly so she can look up at him comfortably, and his hand moves from her shoulder to hover just over the back of her neck.

“How would you describe me, then?” she asks, hoping to turn the conversation to her favor. He mirrors her, pulling a leg up onto the seat so he can face her too.

Despite her effort, Kogami is impossible to catch off guard.

“Intellectually stimulating,” he says thoughtfully, and though he doesn’t smile, there is an unmistakable hint of amusement in the corners of his lips. “Maybe you can be a little reckless, but you work with caution. You’re careful and thoughtful. You’re small-” and when he says this, a charmed smile bleeds through his expression despite his efforts to suppress it, “-easy to protect. And you’re an independent thinker. You aren’t afraid to do things your own way. And you’re complicated, but in the best way.”

When he finishes, her cheeks are uncomfortably warm and he’s leaning a lot closer than he was before. She does, admittedly, feel touched upon hearing his words, but despite that, her eyes are wide and taken aback. It’s not verbatim, but he’s just repeated her words from earlier to describe her, and it’s a substantial pill for her to digest.

Still, brave words leave her mouth before she even realizes she is speaking.

“I give that a ninety-five percent,” she says, countering him, her tone incongruent with her demeanor. She’s tense, and she grips his hand to keep hers from trembling. He notices.

“That last five percent is making you nervous,” he observes aloud. His voice, though low and rough, somehow has an easing effect with an unusual gentleness. Maybe it’s the fact that he can read her like a book and she doesn’t have to say it that makes her relax, even if it’s only by a miniscule amount.

“A little,” she admits. He surprises her when he takes one of her hands and raises it, her eyes following out of curiosity.

“Don’t be,” he says to her skin. “It’s just me.” A kiss to the back of her hand sends an excited flutter rippling through her nerves, raising the hair on her arms as her heart leaps in her chest so loudly that she’s sure he can hear it.

He is right, and she’s fully aware of it. She knows she shouldn’t be nervous around him. There exists nobody else in the world that she trusts more than the man kissing her hand, holding her in the ghost of an embrace.

“Although there’d be no hard feelings if you got that taxi after all.”

It is this moment that secures her in place. He’s giving her an out, before they walk over the line that cannot be uncrossed. A line of which she has never strayed across before, not with anybody, nor has it ever been as close as it is now, just under her fingertips, encircling her with a tempting hand teasing the back of her neck and a knee guarding her in place. 

Perhaps what makes her tremble is the stark unfamiliarity of senses heightened contrasting with how drawn she is to him, how she longs for nothing but to undo the rest of his buttons and lose herself in what comes after.

It’s sweet, but the idea of leaving now is simply laughable. Her hand travels to his thigh, gripping it with silent reassurance.

Her eyes, wide and brown and eager, say it even louder. His are stormy, and in them she can see the way his heart pounds mercilessly just as hers does, and yet there’s a coolness smoothing his slate sky into something tameable.

Control, she realizes, and she wonders in an instance like this what he’s like without it.

His long hand finally settles at the base of her neck, warm and ever present through the thin layer of her sweater. Her own hand falls from his grip to melt into the crook of his elbow as he moves to capture her jaw instead, and she practically pulls herself towards him by his thigh as he leans into her, until their lips meet and she’s delighted to find his are much softer than they look.

She’s pulled into his lap within moments, his hand cradling her underside and trapping her in place, though she hardly minds. Her fingers fumble awkwardly with the buttons of his shirt, pushing it open as far as his shoulders will allow once she frees him of the garment, her polished nails grazing his skin as she drags her hands up his neck to cup his jaws, holding him close as he kisses her furiously.

He breaks the kiss only to slip her sweater up over her head, and the second she’s free he captures her lips again, forcing them apart with his. His tongue, she finds, is just as soft and inviting as his lips.

Distracted, she doesn’t take much notice of his collection of her wrists, as he gently pulls each of them behind her back until he locks one hand ensnared tightly around them. She jumps at this, faltering from his lips, and rests her forehead against his, still close enough that she can feel his sultry breath warming her face. 

“Too forward?” he asks, and his rough voice is low and just as hot. 

She shakes her head, and she can feel her cheeks glowing with heat; they deepen in color when his eyes narrow curiously and he asks if she rather likes it, to which she nods. And she likes it a lot more when he rewards her honesty with a kiss, but this time he is slower, and more gentle, and as he kisses her his free hand trails down the exposed curves of her body until he’s inching under the hem of her skirt and slowly hiking it up her thigh. 

She shudders when his fingers finally forge their way between her legs, and as he strokes her softly he breathes in every single one of the faint cries that spill from her lips.

“Are you still interested in that perfect score?” he asks, muttering in her ear. To her credit, she gives him a playful smirk despite the distracting treatment he’s giving her in her willfully confined predicament.

“The gentleman would really reveal his secrets to me?” she teases. He pulls back to look at her, shooting her a self-depreciating leer of his own.

“I’m no gentleman,” he says. 

“You are with me,” she counters, meeting his gaze firmly. Looking at her, he can’t say she’s entirely wrong. His hand retracts, and although she can’t see it beneath the fabric of her skirt, her eyes dart down instinctively as if looking to see why he stopped. But just as quickly, he tips her gaze back up to his by the gentle grip of her chin, and he’s smiling at her strangely.

“I wonder why that is,” he says. His stare is warm and inviting, and it leaves her heart fluttering as he leans in, closing the distance between them once more, only his lips are rougher, and more insistent. Then he releases her wrists silently, placing them on his shoulders one at a time, and then he’s standing, lifting her into the air with him. 

He lays her back on the bed, and the lights automatically dim, casting a dull, white glow over them that leaves her bare skin radiant like silver. 

Her skirt is too restrictive, and that’s a problem; before he crawls over her frame, he rids her of it entirely, slipping the black from her silky legs along with her tights. She parts her knees for him eagerly, her lips awaiting his return with heated fervor.

In the dark, it’s easier. Hesitation no longer exists, and neither does the past that kept them apart for so long.

He murmurs in her ear with his hand buried beneath her panties, his touches no longer slow and soft, but fast, and rough with need. She struggles to keep up with him.

“I like someone who wants me to take the lead,” he says gruffly. It takes her only a quick moment to figure out that he really is revealing to her his secret. “Someone who likes to be submissive.”

She can feel the heat spreading across her face, like his rough voice melts into liquid that drips from his lips to her skin and ignites her all the way down to her core. He lets his words hang in the air for a few long moments, busying himself with leaving wet kisses along her neckline.

When her only response is nothing but breathy gasps, he turns the tables on her instead.

“Why don’t you tell me more about your type?” he goads. Being inexperienced, she doesn’t know how to answer, and his generous attention on her makes it difficult to think. But she likes this, more deeply than she thought she would, so that has to mean something, right?

She blurts it out without meaning to, but it’s not the wrong answer.

“You.”

By the way his lips freeze, lingering just above her skin, coupled by his fingers slowing inside her, she guesses that it was not what he was expecting to hear. For a second, she worries she’s said the wrong thing, came on too strongly, pushed herself too far forward on a weak limb.

Minute traces of panic creep through her fingertips as his hand slips from inside her, but are instantly quelled as he shifts his body completely over hers, and he cups her face with both of his hands. Cracks are starting to form in that smooth gloss masking his storm.

The next kiss is hungry, demanding. He’s quickly losing his will to hold back. His hands can’t sit still, and they trade places between holding her jaw, snaking into her hair, and gently squeezing the side of her neck, his thumbs carefully tracing over her trachea with measured restraint. She works on forcing him out of his shirt despite the mess of his hands, freeing his thick arms for her to grab onto appreciatively for purchase.

He moves back to her neck, twisting her face away with a firm grip of her chin, his palm daring to press deeper into her throat. She gasps at the feeling of his lips, enjoying the subtle pressure of his hand. Her hips start to move, seeking relief for the heated excitement flaring between her thighs, but as quickly as they start, she stops herself. 

It doesn’t go unnoticed.

“It’s okay,” he says softly against her skin. “Don’t be shy. Show me how badly you want me.” His words of encouragement arouse a new layer of heat to her cheeks that she’s grateful he can’t see in the dark, but she gives in, letting her reservation melt away with the kisses he trails down to her collarbone. His hips meet hers as she grinds against him, and with it she lets out a pleased groan that curls his lips. If this is what it means to be submissive, then she has absolutely no complaints.

Soon after his hands glide beneath her shoulders, and she lifts herself to give his fingers room to slip off her bra. Her hands take root in wet clumps of his hair when he dips his head to her breast, taking the sensitive skin in his mouth and dragging his tongue around it until he’s pulling from her a light string of moans that grind his hips roughly against hers.

The tautness of her fingers alerts him of her growing impatience, closely matching his. His hands drift downward over her stomach, curling around the top of her panties and slipping them down her thighs, but then he freezes suddenly, cursing once he realizes he doesn’t have protection.

Luckily, she’s come prepared, and gestures for her purse on the table. He retrieves it for her, and jots down a quick mental reminder to stock up on his own supply, noting the exact brand labeled on the little square she produces triumphantly from her bag, holding it up in the air like a hard-earned trophy.

He takes it from her hands, then he steps off the bed to slip from the confines of his jeans, and she nudges her panties from her ankles using her feet. The dull light shining from above the headboard lights his skin aglow, and she watches the shadows of his large muscles dance along his arms while he unzips his pants and shifts to step out of them. 

He moves at a slow enough pace that she can take in all of him with affectionate, sultry eyes, but not too slow so as to not waste any time. His patience is wearing dangerously thin, and even from the gaping distance between them she can see the storm of his eyes threatening to break the glass that holds him back. 

Eyeing her body while he rolls on the condom only makes him eager to ingrain the shape of her to his hands’ memory. She lays with her head propped up by pillows, and she watches him with parted, wet lips and a hungry stare. One hand rests above her breast, as though she were holding her heart in place where it threatened to burst from her chest, while the other squeezes the comforter in anticipation. Her legs are bent, her knees resting together with her feet apart, and he’s not sure if she’s fully aware of the intimate display she gives him or if she’s doing it on purpose, but either way, it’s hidden, cast in the shadow of her thighs.

His hands part them needlessly as he moves over her, and she melds her chest to his as he settles on top of her. She cradles his jaw between her soft hands as he lowers his mouth to hers. The kiss is rough and filled with need, and when he plunges himself into her that need isn’t sated in the slightest; rather, it intensifies drastically.

The first few thrusts are careful, calculating, ensuring she isn’t uncomfortable or hurt, but the way she throws her head back in relief, the intensity of her grip as her hands slide to his shoulders, the way her legs wrap tightly around his waist, all push him just over the edge of caution.

His hips pick up in pace and soon he’s snapping against her in a steady rhythm, and he’s grabbing her wrists to pin her hands just above her crown, their fingers lacing together as he crushes his lips to hers possessively, devouring her pleasured cries in his throat. He has to pull away after a moment to allow them to breathe, and he inches their hands higher above her head, caging her face between his arms. As his thrusts grow rougher and faster, he grunts into her shoulder, and her voice rises higher in pitch, chiming in the air like a blissful song floating through his ears. It only pushes him to move faster, harder, deeper into her to see just how much she can take, how much higher he can guide her cries, until her back is arching sharply and her chest presses roughly into his, and her head is thrown back in a final cry as her body convulses with pleasure beneath his, and he follows shortly behind her with a throaty groan into the softness of her neck.

He rests there for a long moment, holding himself up just enough for her to breathe as deeply as she needs to, to catch her breath while he catches his, taking refuge in her warmth. She pries her hands from under his to hold him. Her fingertips massage his scalp lazily, smiling gently when stray tufts of his hair tickle her nose.

Aside from the dim light above them, the window is the only other source of light in the room, and so her eyes are drawn to the open space between the drapes. The sky outside is darker than their room, illuminated by the very same city lights she tenderly watched pass her by as she drove to see him earlier in the night.

The bubbling nervousness she’d felt then, to her, is simply ludicrous as she lay beneath him now, happy and content and without a care in the world. This isn’t how she’d pictured the night to progress, and she isn’t normally one to give into temptations, especially if those temptations breach her responsibilities. 

But as she looks back down at him, at the scruffy, damp mess of his unruly hair sticking out between her fingers, she can’t help but smile. He isn't gone; he's here. And he is undoubtedly, and always will be, an exception. She is perfectly fine with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final edited version, and looks slightly different than what I've posted on tumblr. Thank you for reading!


	5. Catharsis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An epilogue for Temptations? 
> 
> WC: 745  
> Rating: mature

The hall is cold and quiet as her footsteps echo throughout. Her bag in hand, filled modestly with her few belongings, weighs only a feather compared to her detention. Glass panels ahead streak with sunlight, like a filtered art that awakens a familiar memory she’s forgotten.

When the doors slide apart for her, she’s welcomed by the sweet aroma of cherry blossoms that sweep in and usher her outside. This is where you belong, they say. Don’t turn around.

That’s when she’s greeted by the tall silhouette of her chauffeur, keys in hand and an SUV running idly waiting to take her back to Tokyo. Her smile deepens, reflecting the spark in his eye when he sees her. 

No padlocked doors, no endlessly stretching oceans, no empty galaxies. Only an arm’s length keeps her from his warmth. He undoubtedly still feels like a summer night beneath that coat.

He takes her bag with the promise of food. She wonders, with her first giddy laugh of freedom, if he still believes he isn’t a gentleman. The answer is clear several plates and a hefty bill later that he gladly accepts, with a smile as sweet as the pastry they split. Don’t worry about it, he says. If she were the younger version of herself, she might have, despite his impenitence. But there's a confidence to his kindness in the way he so flippantly doesn't care how much he's spending, and it reminds her of when she did the same for him that night in the hotel bar. 

Well, how their tables have turned.

A golden sky casts dim shadows when they leave, but when they reach the edges of Tokyo it’s covered in stygian ink. Where am I taking you, he asks? She doesn’t have an answer, having such an array of options yet nothing set in stone, with too many variables up in the air for her consideration. In the end she takes his offer. It’s late, after all.

But will he mind the inevitable reveal?

No, because there is nothing to hide.

Her eyes fix out the window as she gives her thanks to the night, to the lights streaking past. Murky clouds begin to creep overhead, sombering the sky. But they’re out of the car well before it downpours.

His quarters are on the fifth floor, in a hall of pale walls and glossy wooden panels that muffle their footsteps. It’s barren, except for one brief, familiar face wearing a covert smile, who pretends he doesn’t notice them as he slips into his own residence a few doors down, his sweaty ponytail swishing behind him. 

For once, he has windows. A dark, stuffy room long ago trapped the stench of cigarettes in the wallpaper, and a cubby carved into the wall of an abandoned cathedral could only be sealed with a curtain. It’s strange to see decorations on his walls. He built the bookshelf himself.

Two cups of tea later, he sits alone at the table while the shower runs in the other room. Her apricot cardigan hangs from the coat rack beside his leather, a saccharine splash of paint in the stale interior of his dwelling. 

He could use more color around here.

The change of clothes he leaves for her is inconsequential, for they sleep abandoned on the bathroom counter while she sleeps in his bed, after hours of whispers, gentle cries, and hot chests sticking together, after rugged tales of poetry from the book she returns, with her face tucked safely into his neck until his resonance lulls her to sleep. He follows shortly after with the rain.

In the morning, a proper greeting is in order, and they savor a homemade breakfast from the barstools of Nobuchika’s kitchen as he cooks. Across from her, a passive kiss on his cheek from her old subordinate makes him blush the color of freshly-cut strawberries in a small, glass bowl between them, while she holds Shinya’s hand in her lap under the counter. 

They share an arcane glance that goes unnoticed by the other two; one has his face buried sleepily in between shoulder blades, arms wrapped lazily from behind, and the other is busy stuffing his mouth beside her. It’s good to have you back, he says silently from upturned corners of closed lips.

It’s only an ordinary morning, and yet the smile on his face renders her weightless. That first rainy night feels like a lifetime ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Apologies for any typos.


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